The First Day of Summer.....

Yesterday I made this little doll quilt top. I found the pattern here. It is from Kathleen Tracey's blog A Sentimental Quilter. Some great little quilt patterns there! I wanted to make something fun that could be finished quickly. I have backing and binding fabrics chosen, so hopefully I can finish it today. Most of the fabrics are from Barbara Brackman's Civil War Homefront. I love her fabric designs. (I have a little piece of turkey red fabric from Barbara Brackman's Civil War Reunion fabric on the way here too. :))


Summertime here in our garden brings strawberries... delicious!..



...and the coriander that has bolted to seed with the warmer weather. The flowers are pretty!




I have finished the last of my Dresden Plate blocks. I still have to chose a background fabric. I had fun making these blocks! :)




Summertime brings lots of new fruit. This is the beginning of a small crop of Gravenstein apples. When we moved here we planted a Jonathan apple tree on to which my husband grafted several other varieties of apple from my parent's garden. The only one that took was the Gravenstein. We have one branch that produces a small crop of fruit that are great for cooking.



This rose is actually from the root stock of a Mr Lincoln rose that died years ago. This year has been a great year for roses in my garden and this plant is covered in small flowers.


Two more Morrell blocks are finished!

This is the only block in the quilt with a vase.




This one has 33 flying geese blocks......well, I thought I made 33....one flew the coop! I hunted high and low for the blue fabric and couldn't find it. Luckily I found a replacement in my stash that is almost a matching shade of blue, but not the correct spot. If you don't look too closely the "odd" block fits in!




Recently I have tried a couple of "new to me" techniques. I love learning new ways of doing things. Both techniques I used when I made my friend's quilt.

The first was strip piecing....yes, I had never sewn pieces together that way before!!! It was much faster than the usual way of stopping after every sewing line. Saves thread too!

The other new technique I tried was for basting the quilt. I usually try to find a large table and spread the whole quilt out and pin baste. Often the quilt won't fit on the table and mostly I have ended up with (huge) tucks in the back because part of the quilt hangs over the edge of the table!!!! That leads to lots of frustration, then procrastination over finishing the quilt because I need to rebaste the whole thing!

Well, several moths ago I saw videos on youtube by Sharon Schamber where she showed a different technique to baste quilts. I was reminded of the technique when I saw the links again on Janet's blog. Here are links to the 2 videos. Part 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhwNylePFAA and part 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_EjBGz5vGQ
You don't need a huge space and luckily for me DH had 2 pieces of wood that were just right.
The technique worked perfectly for me first go!!! I will definitely be basting my quilts that way in the future.

The weather here is warming up and we have had the wettest Spring in years. (Last month we reached average rainfall for 12 months for the first time in 11 years!) The garden is loving the rain and warm weather. However, some parts of Australia have had more rain than they need. Spare a thought for Chookyblue and others who have had too much rain!


My favourite red rose Red Velvet. The photo doesn't do justice to the true colour of the rose.

More Morrell blocks

Three more Morrell blocks completed.




One pieced, one appliqued and one broderie perse.




The first block has quite a few flying geese units. I haven't made many flying geese before. I think they will look better the next time I make them. There is a block coming up with even more flying geese so I hope they will look at bit more uniform.


I have ordered the background for my Roseville Album quilt. I chose a Kaffe spot. The colour is called water and is a pale green. Green is my favourite colour!


On Friday I spent the afternoon sewing with my DD. We sewed hundreds of beads and crystals on some bridesmaid dresses. Slow work, but very relaxing.


My Dresden plates are coming along.


I finished another one after I took that photo, so there are 6 now. I plan to make 12, then applique them to a very light coloured fabric and sash with the stronger colours. I am still deciding whether to use corner stones and whether to set the blocks on point. Its fun not following a pattern and making my own decisions as I go along.

I will get back to Tail Feathers and Jacobs Coat in the next few days.

Hmmmm....I may have a few too many projects going on at the same time! lol


It was a beautiful sunny, warm day here today. I spent a few hours in the garden this afternoon. A perfect day for the first day of Day Light Saving. The sun is just setting now and it is still warm outside. Spring has arrived! :)

One Flower Wednesday

My first hexie flower for Spring. My first hexie flower for quite some time!!

Below are all the hexie flowers I have made so far.




Here is my second dresden plate block. I have 2 more cut out ready to stitch.

It looks like a fabric bomb has gone off here!!!!

Over the last 2 or 3 weeks I have had very little time for sewing or blogging. I have been busy with other things. This weekend I am making up for lost time! Lots of sewing and preparation has been happening here over the last 2 days . :) I have pulled out several projects and lots of fabric.

The Morrell block above is my latest finish. Yesterday and Friday I prepared the next 6 Morrell blocks. Now I have plenty to keep me occupied for the next little while.

I also finished off block 3 of Tail Feathers (below) and prepared block 4.




I hope to get at least one flower made for One Flower Wednesday by Wednesday.

Later today I hope to prepare another few blocks for Jacobs Coat.

A couple of weeks ago I entered a giveaway on the Minick and Simpson blog. They were giving away scraps (their words!!) from their latest range of fabrics called Charlevoix. I was lucky enough to be chosen as one of the winners. :)

Below is the huge bag of fabric they sent, along with one of their patterns they also included.
Thank you Laurie!!!





Well, last night I started to think about what I might make with all that fabric. I had ideas about something with lots of triangles. I pulled out a book of block patterns (The Quilter's Block Bible) that had been given to me by a friend. I wanted to chose a block that was designed in an era that matched the fabrics (The information on the selvedge says 1910 - 1935) There were lots of blocks to chose from and I made a long list. Several of the blocks had lots of triangles and looked good. I kept looking through the book and the second last design was a dresden plate. I have never made a dresden plate block before. I am not one to back away from something new, so I changed my mind about triangles and decided on a dresden plate block design.

Below is what I came up with. I was sewing till one o'clock this morning (I just had to get one finished!), so it is not perfect, but I am happy with how it turned out.








Isn't the fabric gorgeous!

There is so much fabric in that bag that I will still be able to make something with triangles too.
Stay tuned.


Here are a couple of photos from one of the places we visited this week. The views were wonderful even though the weather was cold and windy.






Just a couple of spring flowers in my garden.




Rhododendron Bibiani.





Ranunculus.


I hope to be back reading and commenting on blogs this week, but now it is back to sewing for me!! :)